Reference is made to FIG. 1, which is a simplified diagram of a prior art enterprise network 100 connected to an external internet 10. Network 100 is shown generally with resources including computers 110, databases 120, switches and routers 130, and mobile devices 140 such as smart phones and tablets, for ease of presentation, although it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that enterprise networks today are generally much more diverse and complex, and include other devices such as printers, other types of network elements such as relays, and Internet of Things objects. The various connections shown in FIG. 1 may be direct or indirect, wired or wireless communications, or a combination of wired and wireless connections. Computers 110 and databases 120 may be physical elements or logical elements, or a mix of physical and logical elements. Computers 110 and databases 120 may be virtual machines. Computer 110 and databases 120 may be local, remote or cloud-based elements, or a mix of local, remote and cloud-based elements. Computers 110 may be client workstation computers, or server computers including inter alia file transfer protocol (FTP) servers, email servers, structured query language (SQL) servers, secure shell (SSH) servers and other application servers, or a mix of client and server computers. An information technology (IT) department manages and controls network 100 in order to serve the enterprise requirements and meet the enterprise needs.
Access to computers 110 and servers 120 in network 100 may optionally be governed by an access governor 150, such as a directory service, that authorizes users to access computers 110 and databases 120 based on “credentials”. Access governor 150 may be a name directory, such as ACTIVE DIRECTORY® developed by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., for WINDOWS® environments. Background information about ACTIVE DIRECTORY® is available at Wikipedia. Other access governors for WINDOWS and non-WINDOWS environments, include inter alia Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS), and Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), formerly APPLETALK®, developed by Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif. Background information about LDAP, RADIUS and AFP is available at Wikipedia.
Access governor 150 may be one or more local machine access controllers. Access governor 150 may be one or more authorization servers, such as a database server or an application server.
In lieu of access governor 150, the endpoints and/or servers of network 100 determine their local access rights.
Credentials for accessing computers 110 and databases 120 include inter alia server account credentials such as <address> <username> <password> for an FTP server, an SQL server, or an SSH server. Credentials for accessing computers 110 and databases 120 also include user login credentials <username> <password>, or <username> <ticket>, where “ticket” is an authentication ticket, such as a ticket for the Kerberos authentication protocol or NTLM hash used by Microsoft Corp.; or login credentials via certificates or via another implementation used today or in the future. Background information about the Kerberos protocol and the LM hash is available at Wikipedia.
Access governor 150 may maintain a directory of computers 110, databases 120 and their users. Access governor 150 authorizes users and computers, assigns and enforces security policies, and installs and updates software. When a user logs into a computer 110, access governor 150 checks the submitted password, and determines if the user is an administrator (admin), a normal user (user) or other user type.
Computers 110 may run a local or remote security service, which is an operating system process that verifies users logging in to computers and other single sign-on systems and other credential storage systems.
Network 100 may include a security information and event management (SIEM) server 160, which provides real-time analysis of security alerts generated by network hardware and applications. Background information about SIEM is available at Wikipedia.
Network 100 may include a domain name system (DNS) server 170, or such other name service system, for translating domain names to IP addresses. Background information about DNS is available at Wikipedia.
Network 100 may include a firewall 180 located within a demilitarized zone (DMZ), which is a gateway between enterprise network 100 and external internet 10. Firewall 180 controls incoming and outgoing traffic for network 100. Background information about firewalls and DMZ is available at Wikipedia.
One of the most prominent threats that an enterprise faces is a targeted attack; i.e., an individual or group of individuals that attacks the enterprise for a specific purpose, such as leaking data, modifying data and systems, and sabotaging data and systems. Targeted attacks are carried out in multiple stages, typically including inter alia reconnaissance, penetration, lateral movement and payload.
The reconnaissance stage involves collecting information that assists an attacker to infiltrate the enterprise network. There are diverse types of information that are of interest to attacker, and there are diverse resources that an attacker uses for collecting information. One of the primary resources used by an attacker to infiltrate an enterprise network is “open source intelligence” (OSINT), which is information that is available on the network from publicly available sources, such as social media sites TWITTER®, FACEBOOK®, YOUTUBE®, and others. An attacker leverages OSINT to infiltrate a victim's network.
The lateral movement stage involves orientation, movement and propagation, and includes establishing a foothold within the enterprise and expanding that foothold to additional systems within the enterprise.
In order to carry out the lateral movement stage, an attacker, whether a human being who is operating tools within the enterprise network, or a tool with “learning” capabilities, learns information about the environment it is operating in, such as network topology and enterprise structure, implemented security solutions, and then operates in accordance with that data. One method to defend against such attacks, termed “honeypots”, is to plant and monitor deceptive information/decoys/bait, with the objective of the attacker learning of their existence and then consuming those bait resources, which are monitored, and to notify an administrator of the malicious activity. Background information about honeypots is available at Wikipedia.
There are several problems with conventional deception-based security solutions. Conventional Internet-facing honeypots are deceptive emulated systems that have public-facing interfaces with the objective of detected targeted attacks. A main disadvantage of such systems is that the Internet is automatically being scanned, all the time. Many tools like scrapers, vulnerability scanners and others identify new assets in the Internet and map them. This affects Internet honeypots as it creates too many false positive alerts, and the enterprise cannot differentiate between a real attack and an automatic scan.
Conventional deception technology are systems that plant deceptive information in enterprise resources, which points to trap servers, in order to detect an attacked who is moving laterally within the enterprise. A main disadvantage of such systems is that it is focused on tracking internal lateral movement within the enterprise network, which does not address detecting an attacker who uses OSINT resources to infiltrate the network, nor an attacker with high deception awareness.